


Bolt

by LittleSister



Category: Masters of Sex
Genre: F/M, i hope it doesn't sound out of character, i know you can't tell but this is the fulfillment of that old prompt I got, starting slow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-24 15:29:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8377447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSister/pseuds/LittleSister
Summary: Gini invites Bill to the CPP, but he goes to the hospital instead. Then, Gini goes to the hospital too. Then she leaves before Bill does, but she tells him she'll be waiting for him at the CPP and that the invitation still stands and she just wants to talk. Then Bill takes her up on it and goes to the CPP too.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after the hospital and Betty and Helen and all the feelings. I still haven't watched 4x07 and I'm not gonna be able to for a while.. So here's how I made up for it. It's gonna get explicit before you even realize it. The title's not music related this time but it's gonna make more sense as we go, I guess.

It sounded so much easier in Gini's head. 

They'd been sitting across each other for a good five -completely soundless- minutes, before Gini opened her mouth for the first time, determined not to waste any more of her time alone with bill.  
She knew what she wanted to say, she knew how to say it, each word like perfect breeze teasing the glowing embers at the bottom of her throat.  
Yeah, she could feel it burning, and she was ready to spill, if Bill was gonna sit there and just wait for her to do it. She could feel it burning.  
But Gini didn't exactly know what "it" was until Bill lifted his eyes to look at her and a sucking void closed her windpipe, which is somewhat of a paradox, because she could swear all of her insides swelled up like balloons as soon as their gazes made contact. It was like Bill had never learnt how to speak and he was looking at the night sky for the first time; it was like Gini was surely sitting down in a tub that she forgot to fill. Raw. Naked. Liquid-nitrogen-honest.  
Gini closed her mouth and looked down instantly, before toeing off her shoes, tucking her legs up on the mattress and scooting slightly back towards the center of the large, familiar bed.  
Bill heavily leant back on the stiff sofa, but his back knew all too well what to expect from it's thinly cushioned backrest. He kept his eyes on the edge of the bed and his dry mouth closed, idle dreams of ice cubes clinking in a glass of clear alcohol mixing with memories that took place in that very same room. His shoulders tensed a bit. He could practically feel her weight in his arms as well as he could feel it upon his once misty, turbulent heart. He could feel her on his chest like he'd been transmuted into the rectangular island covered in stiff white sheets supporting her in that very moment. Just a few feet from him, fairly within reach. He would just need to step over his own cold, dead body lying there on the floor, right between them. Just like old times.  
Gini followed his eyes to the floor and wiped her mouth clean of all the big words she'd been chewing on for hours.

"Why did you come, then?"  
His gaze skirted around the room and fixed on the top of the curtains, on his right. He sounded as tired as the last glimmer of starlight before dawn.  
"I've had the most terrible night, Gini, if you don't want me here after all you did to get me here in the first place.."  
"Bill, come on"  
He didn't even sigh, he just blinked very slowly.  
"You said you just wanted to talk"  
"...I did"  
"You're not really talking, though"  
It sounded SO much easier in Gini's head, just a few hours before.  
"I'm sor-"  
"No"  
Now his eyes were back on her. Half lidded, stoney.  
"Don't."  
He took a slightly deeper, controlled breath and stared at the lamp behind Gini's left shoulder. The frame around his sentence shook just a bit.  
"Start again"  
"I wish I could do that"  
The slightest furrow in Bill's brow.  
"And I wish I was as good with speeches.. As you are"  
When he looked at her, he saw the ground beneath her feet cracking and growling in the way she purposefully picked at the skin around her fingernails.  
"I know.. I- we both-" she cleared her throat loudly, with too much force, and anyone would have thought it would have bothered the quiet glow in the air, if it wasn't that thousands of sounds coming from Gini's throat were already etched in every single wall of the room. The smallest drop of blood stained the side of her right thumb.  
"We hurt each other, over time. A lot. Every time we did, we got to know one another a little better.. I often wondered how much we could still take. If there was even somewhere to go from there. Somewhere else.."  
Bill sneered, and Gini's unfocused eyes climbed down each one of his shirt's buttons.  
"..somewhere further"  
They looked at each other for a second.  
"I never doubted that I was my best self when I was by your side"  
She swallowed and her voice thinned, a strange blend of amusement and bitterness swirling in it.  
"I resented you so much for that.  
Every time you weren't with me.. I just had to pretend I was in a big surgery room and you were actually watching me from somewhere up above, behind a glass. And There I was. My best self again."  
The chuckle bill let out was dry, waiting for the storm of her words to break the drought, terrified it was gonna be way too much, that it was just gonna make everything rot away.  
"I never fully understood the weight of your presence in my life, my whole life. Fighting with my kids, dealing with patients, one night stands.. Wasn't like you were always my first and only thought, but I feel now like you've always creeped up on me when I was least expecting it. Someone would say a world, Tessa would look at me a certain way.. It's like you were in everyone in front of me. The only one you were truly in was.. Well, myself, I know now, but I was way too.. " she chuckled, genuine. Sad. "I guess I've always been way too myself to see it. You can't really blame me though, can you? You can't blame someone with blue corneas when they tell you the whole world is blue and firmly believe it."  
The only answer Gini got, for a couple of seconds was the sound of Bill's hands rubbing over his eyes and cheeks, hiding his expression. And maybe it was appropriate, given that Gini's own heartbeat was so distracting she could barely focus on staying upright and remembering where and why and who.

"Virginia.."  
His elbows dug into his thighs, one hand still scrunching up one of his closed eyes.  
"See, I came here because I needed to prove something to myself. There's a reason I told you I couldn't trust you, and you just confirmed it yourself"  
He let his hands drop and a wave of pressure pushed against Gini's ribs from inside her chest. Her eyes followed each line on his face and her fingers itched.  
"Because I told you that I couldn't see it"  
"Because you told me that you were too yourself to see it"  
"Well, yes, but that's exactly my point: I'm still myself, but now I can and DO see it"  
"See what Virginia? Huh? See that I am the one true love for you? That we are destined to be together because we're the only ones who can clearly understand and accept and challenge each other? Have you finally seen, after all the lies and deception you have put me through, that if I'm still here it must mean that I will always be and that's reassuring enough for you to believe that NOW you.. What, love me?"  
Gini watched Bill's lips roll out and wrap around the word that had been swirling around inside her mind for a while, and she felt the acidic aftertaste it left hanging between them. It stained Bill's figure in her field of vision, it dimmed the passion of her pulse.. Like one of her arteries had just started leaking. Both tension and hurt followed a good portion of her hope out of her body, and she realized there was no use stacking more vitriol on top of what Bill had just said.  
"You truly don't believe I'm going to keep trying to convince you, right?"  
"You don't even know what you're trying to convince me of, Gini"  
She ponders, her face relaxing. Someone honks their horn in the distance.  
"True, but I do know that I want to convince you of something"  
Bill's sigh is short, light.  
"I don't know where you're going with this"  
"Well, knowing the true nature of a feeling is surely important. Knowing what drives it, where it's headed. Sure."  
Bill found himself following the small, purposeful movements of her hands as she spoke, and claiming his attention back to himself costed so much more than he wished it did. That's exactly why he didn't wanna come.  
Gini took one more second to bask in the ease that so easily set between the two of them, then she looked up and caught him somewhere between really tired and really stubborn. She had to remind herself that she wasn't remiscing one of their old, extremely-not-roleplay, roleplay sessions.  
"It doesn't change the fact that it's there, though. The importance of getting to the bottom of a feeling.. Of getting to the truth, does not outweighs its consequences"  
"And what are the consequences Gini?"  
"You know what the consequences are"  
"You said you wanted to talk about us but I still haven't heard you say a single clear thing"  
Eyes still locked together, Gini raises one corner of her mouth, not a trace of amusement holding it up.  
"You may have changed a lot lately, But I'm glad to see you're still as sharp as you ever were, dr Holden"  
Gini kept her eyes on the arrow as it landed and sunk in, waiting for him to just plainly walk out, snap at her or something along those lines. It felt like counting the seconds between lightning and thunder, wondering how close you were to being struck by it.  
Bill looked down and licked his lips.

"Must be the location, darling"

But the roar of the clouds is always way too loud for kids to care about physics and distance and potential danger.. They just want the sky to light up one more time. Then again, kids do not have power over the storm. But Gini's not a kid anymore. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ohhhh you're gonna hate me a little bit for this. Well, the original prompt WAS something like this, so there you have it.  
> (Just wrote it, publishing without even re-reading it, I'm sorry)  
> (Oh also, this one is in present tense because I'm a dumbass)

As he carefully scans every inch of the floor around his shoes, Bill's thoughts go to the AA, and to every time he has felt disgusted to be associated with those pitiful, weak-wristed, red-faced, whining humans. He thinks about his brother, about how he still believes Frank would fall back into his bad old alcoholic ways, every now and then, just to have something to moan about. That's why you go to meetings and make amends and whatnot. For the attention. And you go back to self destruction because you're nothing but the weak excuse for a man.  
Bill looks up and sees a small smile barely hanging on to Gini's cheeks. Even her smile is weak. Does it mean their bond is weaker than he always thought it was? After all it took just one very weak speech from her and here he is, buzzing all over with anticipation, shivering to his core at the notion that  
She. Is. His.  
They're alone. She wants this. She asked him here. She wants them to be together.  
Before he knows it, Bill is on his feet and on his way over to the bed, walking through the cloud of dust and desire his mind has raised by blowing on the thoughts that have been furnishing his head for over a decade now.  
He sits on the edge, facing the dark window and wondering how his back must look in the mirror of Gini's.. blue corneas. 

Gini follows his movements only with her eyes while her head stays slightly lowered and her bent knees tilt forward in his direction, the mattress dipping as Bill sits down on it.  
She feels like a wildlife photographer who's stumbled upon a careless bear in the woods: she doesn't know wether to just go with it, whip out her camera and snap all the pictures she can and then run away as fast as she can, or if she should just try and blend with the trees and wait for him to decide what to do with her.  
When the white of bill's shirt settles back into focus inside her mind, she mentally smacks herself upside the head and shuffles forward: this is not a bear she's looking at, it's just a loose nail in the juncture between them.

Bill closes his eyes and lets his body decode every new piece of information as it comes, without any visual aid. The mattress shifts and she must be on her knees now. God, he thought he was so close to freedom, so close to unhinging this door that's been keeping him caged for so long. The inside of his eyelids turns a darker shade of red and she must have dimmed the lights just a little. He feels his blood sprinting along his arms with a strength that can only be matched by the weakness of his own metaphorical wrists. The springs whisper a creak and she's closer to him. He knows he never had any sort of sobriety chips just as well as he knows he just lost all of them. Her fingers curl around his right shoulder and slide along his trapezius, not slow but light, almost respectful.  
It's no use smashing the hinges of a door that's been bolted to the floor, so he turns his head slightly towards her, opening his eyes in time to see her hand slip down like a tiny skier on the white slope of his chest, and the knuckles of her other hand brush against the exposed side of his neck down to the spot where it disappears inside his open shirt collar.  
But the moment feels different from how he imagined it, and boy did he imagine it. Her touch doesn't wreck havoc all over his skin, his ears are not ringing, his blood doesn't turn to quicksilver as soon as her cheek presses against his temple.  
He wonders which side of the door he's on, while he reaches back and his left hand lands on Gini's thigh. She's sitting on her heels behind him, her legs spread on either side of him, her stomach against his back, and Bill struggles with vertigo as the feeling of the inert fabric of her slacks matches with the equally lifeless patch of tissue on his heart where she has carved her name. He squeezes muscle and warmth, stopping mid-thigh, turning his head more -she does the same- so the tip of Gini's nose bumps on his forehead and he would be staring straight at her lips, if they weren't so close. 

Gini knows her breathing already sounds needy, she can feel it bouncing back to her as it hits the top of Bill's head, but she can't really worry about dominance with the firm frame of Bill's body between her legs, and it's been so long that she doesn't even care that he's still facing the wrong way. Besides, it's easier like this: undoing one button at a time without his eyes on her, just letting her fingers listen to his pulse under the blanket of his open shirt, her other hand riding the slight waves of his chest, rising and falling with the tides of his lungs.  
She feels him swallow down a lump when she presses her lips on his forehead, but not exactly like a mother would: her mouth lingers there and it's like a trigger for Bill's neck to tilt his head up and kiss her before they can make eye contact again.  
Bill's movements become automatic: he plants his hands on the edge of the bed and scoots backwards, and their lips are still trying to hold onto each other as Gini shuffles in the same direction with her hands still moving over his chest and neck. She makes room for his shoulders to turn so he can partially face her, and now their mouths align without him having to twist his neck and Gini grabs him by the shirt and pulls him all the way onto the mattress, shoes and all. Bill falls on his right elbow and he's half lying on top of Gini, who's shimming down beneath him so her knees don't stab his ribs. He reaches down and unbuttons her slacks, and Gini helps him pulling them down as naturally as she can, hoping e doesn't notice her fingers shaking.  
They're both chuckling as they adjust their tangled clothes and limbs back into place, Gini brushes a strand of hair off her face and smiles as Bill tries to shrug off his shirt: same old white tshirt underneath, same old graceful ways. She runs her fingers trough the thick mat of hair on top of his head and he looks back down at her like everything's normal, like she just asked him a very trivial question and he hasn't quite heard it. Gini deflects the fit inside her chest by sliding her hand down his right arm, still partly trapped inside the sleeve of his shirt. Bill stops trying to writhe out of it, but his muscles are still tense from the position he's stuck in, and Gini traces every bump and bulge from his forearm up to his tricep and shoulder. She licks her lips and Bill's legs are moving slowly against hers, the spot where her arm wraps around his neck against the pillow pushing out the first thin layer of sweat. 

"God, I missed your arms"  
"Well, just give me a second to free them then, alright?"  
She ponders, and her gaze looks weirdly intense as Bill resumes the fight with his left sleeve. He throws the shirt towards the couch and smirks back at her.  
"Were you going to tell me to keep it there so I couldn't move?"  
Gini wraps her right arm around his neck too and kisses him again, one of his hands grabbing the joint between her butt and her thigh, pulling her body in. She manages to get the words out between their lips and the flat of Bill's tongue trying to shut her up before she can even answer.  
"I never got to tie you up good, after that one time.."  
Bill's insides feel like they're all pulsing at the memory, but he can't really tell if it's good or not.  
"So you're gonna let me do as I please?"  
Gini huffs out a small laugh, then arches her lower back into him, her thigh hiking up his until it's resting on his hip, his hand tightening its grip around the bare flesh just under the hem of her underwear. She lets his tongue glide inside her mouth this time, meeting it with her own and a small moan, rolling her hips against the heat clustering between their pelvises. She slides her hand up from the back of his neck, between his hair, palm flat against his skull, then slowly makes a fist of it, pulling his head back from her a bit so she can look him in the eye.. But she doesn't. She's staring at his damp lips as she answers the question.

"I don't want you to be tied up anymore, when you're with me"

The next kiss is deep and Bill's teeth pull on Gini's lower lip and then he's diving back in and there's urgency in the way he pants hen they part, but Gini keeps slowing the pace down and he goes with it because he doesn't really know if he wants this to end fast, if he needs her RIGHT NOW or if he never wants it to end or if he just needs all the time he can get to figure it out.  
All conscious thought, anyway, gets shut down for a good ten seconds when Gini sucks on his tongue without any warning, and no, he wasn't expecting one, but he would never have thought he could get distant enough from her that she would get to surprise him like this again. Well, it's mostly because he'd vowed to himself he wouldn't be in this exact situation ever again.  
He moans, in spite of himself, and Gini presses her whole body closer, pushing his left shoulder down so she can straddle him. Bill's hands fly to her thighs, to her hips grinding down on his and she's licking a stripe down his neck to where his collar bones meet. Her hands are on both sides of his face and all Bill can do with his own hands is following the sway of her body over his, and he realizes he's getting too hard to still muster up the strength to get up and leave, at this point.  
She must notice the slight widening of his eyes, because she slows down to a slow, slight thrust of her hips and cups his right cheek, bending to kiss him until he's wrapping his arms around her waist, pulling her down. She pushes herself up against his chest and moves down to leave the wet mark of a bite on his neck, then his shoulder, clavicle, the centre of the arc his ribs trace around his stomach, leaving a kiss under his navel before stopping to look up at him.  
Bill runs a hand through the hair on her temple, and his legs spread a little further along with the layer of mist clouding the space behind his eyes and Gini's half smirk. She keeps looking into his eyes as she undoes his pants, pulling on the zipper and pressing it purposefully down across the outline of Bill's hardening cock. He mouths a voiceless moan when the flat Of Gini's tongue traces the bulge in his boxers, a shifting patch of warmth and spit climbing up to where the head is hidden by fabric and thin skin. She pulls down his pants as far as the middle of his thighs and squeezes the bare skin there, digging her nails in as she sucks on the tip of his dick through the cotton and the tension in his eyes. He does groan this time, throwing his head back against the mattress and his hand curling into a fist at the base of Gini's skull. He uses his other hand to pull down his boxers, and Gini's mouth waters when she hears him breathe her name after she bites on the ridge of his hipbone.  
The smell of sex and sweat and Bill hits Gini square in the lower part of her belly, deep and hot and she takes him in her mouth without even teasing him, wrapping the head tight and making her way down the shaft with her tongue pressed on the underside of it, hollowing her cheeks, holding Bill's balls with a palm that not only feels but must be on fire, because Bill sounds like he's melting. When she comes back up and licks his frenulum, tiny pearls of spit hang onto the hairs at the base of bill's cock, and every muscle in his torso stains against his skin, the veins in his forearm reminding her of some Greek statue she must have seen somewhere along the line.  
After five minutes and what feels like the thousandth time her tongue has circled the head of bill's cock, Gini let's go of it with the wet pop she knows makes him squirm under her, grabs his hand and places it on the small of her back, guiding Bill's fingers under the band of her underwear and pulling them down until they drop around her knees. She steps out of them and straddles Bill's hips with his hands wrapped around her waist.  
She bends down one more time and kisses him between labored breaths, reaching down to align his erection with her entrance, her hand coming back slick with both of them.  
Bill's lips are still moving against hers, when she first feels him getting softer, barely inside of her. The heat of his blood rushing upwards inside his shaft is still there, but it's quieter. It's weaker. The grip of his hands is still there, but it's slowly sliding down to settle on her hips, gently pushing her upwards and backwards at the same time, away from the spot where their bodies were supposed to meet again. 

She sits cross legged between Bill's calves, at the opposite end of where his wrist is covering his eyes. She's got her underwear back on, and the wet patch on the inside of them has gotten ice cold. Or maybe it's her own skin, she can't really tell.  
Bill's voice croaks and creases the musty silence.

"This is all too familiar, isn't it"  
"I guess I shouldn't have dragged you here"  
"You didn't drag me here"  
"Yes I did, Bill, don't patronize me"  
He lets his hand fall back down, but he still doesn't look at her, even as he sits up and starts buttoning his pants again. She shivers and goosebumps raise on her thighs, Bill fights the urge to rub them warm. When he swings his legs down the side of the bed, Gini scoots closer to him, just enough for their shoulders to touch. He doesn't back away.  
"It's not this place, is it?"  
She knows the answer, this is just masochism.  
"I'm sorry Gini, I don't know what to.."  
He doesn't sound sorry, though.  
"Don't, okay? Just.. I know we can't pretend like this hasn't happened, but let's try, alright?"  
"I guess we're pretty good at that"  
Gini looks down at his hands in his lap, at the groove his wedding band has carved over the years.  
"Yeah. Well, we could have been better"  
"There's room for improvement"  
She laughs. It's bittersweet and full of sadness, but she laughs. 

When Bill leaves, he doesn't turn to look at her as he's closing the door, like he always used to do, and Gini marvels at how the pain of rejection doesnt get blunt over the years. It's a diamond knife. It's like a nail that never gets loose and just keeps holding the picture up forever.  
Hah.. The loose nail.  
In the end it's no use bolting a door down if you're just gonna smash your fist against it every time you need to get in. The bolts are bound to get loose and bolt right out of their place. And when it happens, it's gonna e a bolt out of the blue.


End file.
